Today's topic is capitalizing tricky nouns like ground zero, internet, and earth.

When you're trying to decide whether to capitalize a noun, you have to figure out whether

it's a proper noun or a common noun, because proper nouns are capitalized and common

nouns aren't.

If you remember the Saturday morning cartoon, Schoolhouse Rock, you'll remember that a

noun is a person, place, or thing.

But proper nouns name specific people, places, or things.

Names like one, Sarah, and Gisoo are capitalized because they're proper nouns that name specific

people.

On the other hand, words like boy and girl aren't capitalized because they're common

nouns that don't refer to any one individual person or item.

So names are easy, but what about those other words that seem as if they could go either

the way?

For example, is the internet one specific place or is it a collection of things?

Most language experts, including the associated press, the editors of the Chicago Manual

of Style and the Yahoo Style Guide, believe the internet is one big specific network that

people visit, so they recommend capitalizing the word internet.

On the other hand, the internet is populated by many different websites, so the word website

is not capitalized.

It's a generic term that can be used to describe many different locations.

So internet is a proper noun because it refers to something specific, whereas website is

a common noun because it can be used to refer to many different places on the internet.

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